World leaders came together at the edge of Amazon rainforest in Belem, Brazil, for the annual United Nations climate conference on Thursday. They warned that time is running out for swift and decisive action to prevent the worst effects of climate change and criticised the United States for its retreat from those efforts.
In the opening of a meeting of chiefs of state U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres criticised global powers for “remaining captive to the fossil fuel interests, rather than protecting the public interest.”
He warned that “even a temporary overshoot will have dramatic consequences … every fraction of a degree higher means more hunger, displacement, and loss.” Guterres added that allowing global warming to surpass the crucial benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit), outlined in the Paris Agreement, would be a “moral failure and deadly negligence.”
To stop the continued devastation of tropical rainforests and fulfil the numerous commitments made at earlier summits, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva attempted to raise money from world powers. However, lower attendance, with barely half of the heads of state present as at the summit last year, highlighted global divisions and created a depressing atmosphere.
The leaders of the world’s three largest polluters—China, the US, and India, were absent at the preparatory meeting prior to the start of climate negotiations. The Conference of Parties, or COP30, is scheduled for next week.
Lula warned that the Amazon rainforest was “no greater symbol of the environmental cause” and cautioned that the “window of opportunity we have to act is rapidly closing,” in a stirring speech.
The biodiverse Amazon rainforest, dubbed the “lungs of the world” due to its ability to absorb enormous amounts of carbon dioxide–a greenhouse gas that warms the globe, has been devastated by cattle ranching and choked by wildfires. In the last 50 years, almost 17 percent of the Amazon’s forest cover has disappeared due to mining, logging, and farming.
“It is only right that it is the turn of the Amazonian people to ask what the rest of the world is doing to prevent the collapse of their home,” said the Brazilian president.
As the U.N. weather agency announced that 2025 was expected to be the second or third warmest year ever recorded, leaders spoke in Belem. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Thursday that ocean temperatures and sea levels continued to grow in 2025, as did the quantity of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which reached a record high last year.
US absent at the leaders’ meeting
No senior officials were sent to Belem by US President Donald Trump, who believes climate change is a hoax and signed an executive order withdrawing his nation from the Paris Agreement on climate change the day he took charge in January this year. Due to the government shutdown, US airlines cancelled hundreds of flights, making it difficult for even American politicians to travel to Brazil.
There are concerns that the US’ absence, which has occasionally been crucial in persuading China to limit carbon emissions and obtaining funding for developing nations, may hint at a more widespread rollback of climate policy.
“Extremist forces fabricate falsehoods to gain electoral advantage and trap future generations in an outdated model that perpetuates social and economic disparities and environmental degradation,” remarked Lula, without naming Trump.
However, Colombian President Gustavo Petro directly criticised Trump, stating that his absence was “100% wrong.”
Petro, whose fued with his American counterpart intensified in recent weeks after Trump accused him of being a drug lord and imposed financial sanctions on him and his family, said, “Trump is against humankind.”
“We can see the collapse that can happen if the U.S. does not decarbonise its economy,” Petro remarked.
Trump was also singled out by Gabriel Boric, the left-wing President of Chile, who said that his assertions that “the climate crisis does not exist … is a lie.”
Additionally, indigenous organisations cautioned that Trump’s inaction would encourage other nations to overlook the situation.
According to Nadino Kalapucha, the spokesperson for the Amazonian Kichwa Indigenous community in Ecuador, “it pushes governments further towards denial and deregulation. That trickles down to us, to Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, where environmental protection is already under pressure.”
Argentine President, Javier Milei, who withdrew his country’s negotiators from the climate summit in Azerbaijan last year and threatened to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, also boycotted this week’s meeting.
Ten years after the Paris Agreement promised a new era of international cooperation, leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer were faced with a formidable array of political challenges in addition to the consequences of an escalating global climate crisis.
“Today, sadly, that consensus is gone, with some arguing that this isn’t the time to act and saying that tackling climate change can wait,” Starmer said in his address.
Lula, who has positioned himself as a champion of climate diplomacy in the Global South and received widespread recognition for reducing deforestation in the Amazon, hopes to take advantage of Brazil’s global prominence to advocate for action on reducing emissions that contribute to global warming and assisting developing countries in adapting to extreme weather and other climate-related dangers.
However, Lula’s dedication has encountered financial difficulties. He recently gave the state oil company Petrobras permission to explore oil close to the Amazon River’s mouth, which environmentalists claim could result in hazardous oil spills. Lula has responded to accusations of being hypocritical.